Harlan's Race

forebodings about a bullet had come true. A homophobic politician named Dan White had walked up to Milk in his office, and shot him dead, minutes after shooting George Moscone, the liberal mayor of San Francisco. For days I lived in a frenzy of emotion — after-flashes of Montreal. Somewhere, Vince was weeping, raging, remembering too — pushed that much closer to his breaking point.
    December 1978
    Just before Christmas, Angel was quietly hospitalized in a Manhattan clinic. When his emaciated form went through the CAT scanner, lesions showed on his brain. His T-cells had dropped to nothing.
    Our Prescott friends were scared off from visiting Angel.
    “If women get even a trace of toxoplasmosis,” Marian said, “it affects the baby. Give Steve and Angel our love.”
    On Christmas Eve, when I walked into Intensive Care, Vince and George Rayburn were there.
    I’d expected Vince to have a boot-camp look. Instead, he was road-stained, sleazy, uncombed, smoking again. He was wearing aviator sunglasses, cowboy boots and a T-shirt that said NUKE A COMMIE TODAY. His battered black jacket had a spread eagle on the back. An energy of straight male feistiness hung around him as he stared at me defiantly. Vince, my Vince, who had marched for peace when he was 15. Now bruises decorated his knuckles.
    Ignoring Vince, I sat by Steve, who was hollow-eyed.
    Angel was propped on pillows, with his thin hand between Steve’s two big hands. He was breathing harshly through the oxygen mask. The right side of his face was twisted — nerves affected by the brain lesions. There was nothing to say. So I just rubbed Steve’s shoulder. As Angel mumbled something to Steve, his sunken blue eyes held that spirit clearness of the dying.
    An hour later Angel slid into a coma.
    Doc Jacobs and I talked sadly in the hall outside.
    “It’s odd,” he said. “So many young gay men that I’ve tracked through drug use, and STDs, and immune depression, are really sick now.”
    Steve’s lover died just before midnight. It was terrible to see the way Steve cried. I almost wanted to tell him to stop.
    The aides tied the boy’s hands and feet, strapped his lower jaw in place. Then they wrestled him into a body bag. As all the world was singing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” the body-bag zipper closed over Angel’s once-beautiful face.
    For a few days, Vince, Rayburn and I stayed with Steve at his apartment, because our friend was severely dazed. Vince had nothing to say about his new life.
    “It would break Billy’s heart to see you,” I told him.
    With his gift for hitting below the belt, Vince retorted, ‘Yeah, you put Billy on this pedestal of perfect. What if you’d had to live with him day after day, for 20 years? Shit .. you’ve been with me longer than you were with Billy.”
    Having said this, he climbed in bed with me. In two minutes I had the upper hand again, and we both behaved like junkies who’d just gotten their hands on some high-grade dope. The next day, we had another fight, and he walked out. I was furious, and called Harry and Chino from a pay phone.
    “What the hell is Julius doing?” I barked. ‘Vince looks like a road-house maggot.”
    “Our kid needs to do better at passing,” Harry said calmly. “Get the lavender spoon out of his mouth, Julius said.”
    By New Year’s, things came to a head between Michael and the family. First Kevin came down from Princeton to “talk sense” to Michael about seeing me. Kevin was six foot two, on the wrestling varsity. They had a confrontation at Michael’s apartment. When threats didn’t work, he roughed Michael up — broke his nose and cracked two ribs. Next, Kevin’s mother and stepfather were on the phone. If Michael didn’t stop seeing me, they would terminate payments for school, and sue him to recover what they’d already forked out. My shy firstborn said he was having John Sive file assault-and-battery charges against Kevin, and they could keep their fucking money.
    Astarte went to war with her own family, who’d been trying to maneuver the pair toward a traditional wedding. Now that they knew who I was, they wanted their daughter to break off with Michael. Since she was 24, and financially independent, she simply said no.
    Finally Mary Ellen and her husband agreed not to sue, in exchange for Michael’s dropping charges against Kevin. I offered to pay for his schooling.
    But Michael drew himself up.
    “I’ll work my way through school, Dad,” he